Fire Department History

In 1951, Orange Township Trustees E.P. Brintlinger, J. David English, Clifford S. Gooding and Treasurer John Schimmel saw a need for fire protection. Each of the trustees then recruited young men to be volunteer firemen. On October 2, 1951, volunteers met in the Township house and held regular meetings thereafter. They made contributions and received donations from interested people and companies.

An old oil tank truck was purchased for $152.00 and was made into a water truck. The men also fixed up a Willy’s Jeep Pick-up to be used for fighting grass fires. They fitted it with a water tank, a pump and painted it red. The trucks were kept in John Schimmel’s barn until the firehouse was built.

The first firehouse was built by Frankenburg. The building provided a place for the fire truck; the grass truck and meetings were held in the back. Later many of the volunteer firemen helped build an addition on the north side of the building and this section of the building had restrooms, a kitchen and a meeting room. The building served Orange Township well until 1986 when a new firehouse on the corner of Orange Road and Old State Road was built. The larger building included a meeting room (for trustee meetings), kitchen, day room, restrooms, offices, radio room and storage room beside three large bays for trucks. A second fire station located on the West side of US 23 in the North Orange development was added in 2004 and is considered one of the most up-to-date facilities in central Ohio. The station was built to allow for future growth and offers numerous training opportunities on site.

Sherman Ball Sr. was the first Orange Township Fire Chief. He was chief from 1952 to 1960 with Bill Percy as Deputy Chief from 1952 to 1984. Virgil Newell was the chief from 1960 to 1987. Bill Noble was chief from 1988 to 2000 and saw the department through the changing of Volunteer to a full time 24/7 service. Tom Stewart has been the Fire Chief since 2000. A 24/7 advanced cardiac life support and basic trauma life support emergency medical response and transport service was implemented to meet the EMS demands of a rapidly growing township. Chief Stewart was also instrumental in remodeling the station on the corner of Orange Road and Old State Road and the planning and building of the new station on US 23.